Almost Midnight (15 page)

After forty miles of silent, jittery driving, they pulled into the gravel entrance drive of Camp Ridge and nudged up alongside
their pop-up camper. Mary got the camper ready for sleeping while Darrell transferred the drugs into a yellow plastic cooler—all but one plastic bag’s worth, which he shoved into his jacket pocket, thinking he’d break it up later on and maybe sell it somewhere down the road. He decided to take a taste right now himself.
Just one taste, that’s all, just to sample the stuff, one taste, no more, gotta be clearheaded for what’s coming up
. He took a taste and then carried the cooler into the forest and buried it beside a large rock.

Mary spent the next two days feeling like a sleepwalker. She felt zonked-out, zombified. She’d been on the road so long, the days and weeks bleeding into one another, that time had stopped having any real meaning. She sat around smoking cigarettes, playing with her dogs, not talking too much with Darrell, the two of them going to Chadwick a few times for groceries and then coming back and making a fire. Groups of young guys, three or four at a time, would come into the campground, unload trail bikes from their pickups, and roar off into the woods. There was no running water on the grounds, just a wooden outhouse with separate doors for women and men. Groggy and grungy, Mary wished they had money to rent a motel room so she could shower and watch some TV. She thought about finding a phone and calling her mom, who was just thirty-five miles away in Branson, but what could she say? How ya doin’ Mom? I’m still with Darrell. We’ve come back to take care of Lloyd. Nothing to worry about.

Late afternoon on the third day, Friday, May 13, Darrell said it was time. He knew what he had to do; there was no sense waiting any longer. They took the station wagon, with Mary driving, to U.S. 65 and then south twenty miles just across the Taney County line to Bear Creek Road, where Darrell told her to pull over.

He laid out the plan. Later on, after dark, Mary would drop him right here, on Bear Creek Road just off U.S. 65. He’d scuttle down to the creek and follow its curves behind a cover of trees for a couple of miles, then cut south across an open field and over a hill. From there he’d be in range of both Lloyd Lawrence’s cabin and Rocky Redford’s place, just half a mile apart. If Lloyd was around
for the weekend, Darrell would take care of business. And if Rocky was also around, so much the better. He’d confront Rocky for trying to come between him and Mary—throw a good scare into the guy. Knock off two problems in one trip then get the hell out of there. When the job was done, he’d come back the same way and tie an orange highway ribbon to a tree underneath the bridge that crosses Bear Creek on U.S. 65. Mary would check for the ribbon the next day, late afternoon, and if it wasn’t there, the day after that. As soon as she saw it, she’d drive back north a mile or so and pick Darrell up at an old logging road that was cut into the forest off Route 176, a stone’s throw from U.S. 65.

Driving back to the campground, Darrell went over the plan two or three more times, making certain Mary understood what she was supposed to do. She told him sure, sure, she got it, no need to keep going on about it.

Five hours later, almost midnight, the campground quiet now, with nobody else around, Darrell said it was time to move. He’d put on camouflage clothing and smeared his face with paint, stuffed his pockets with extra ammunition, and packed a knapsack with a bedroll, binoculars, and food. He was armed with a bowie knife, a Smith & Wesson .357 pistol, and the 12-gauge Benelli shotgun Mary had bought in Phoenix.

On the way back down to Bear Creek Road, a thin fog drifting out of the hills, Mary said maybe they should just forget about the whole thing. Turn back now before it was too late, pick up their camper, and clear right out of the area. Maybe they could go to California, change their names, try to find work. Darrell said there wasn’t any point turning back now. They’d known for some time they’d have to deal with Lloyd, and this was what he meant to do.

What if Lloyd wasn’t even at his cabin, Mary wanted to know. In that case, Darrell said, he’d maybe just burn the place down and then go over the next hill and pay Rocky a visit. But if Lloyd was there, he was going to have to kill him.

Darrell squeezed Mary’s shoulder, told her he loved her, and slipped out of the car. He walked up the creek, no sign of life except
for some farmhouses on his right, the glow from their kitchen windows lighting up the trees, and made his way to a hill overlooking Rocky’s house. Since Mary had dropped him off, he’d been thinking of maybe settling things with Rocky first, then moving on to Lloyd, but the house was completely dark, no vehicles around, nothing doing. He found an abandoned barn nearby and decided to pack it in for the night. First thing in the morning, with a few hours’ sleep under his belt, he’d assess the situation anew.

A
FEW MINUTES
before five on the evening of Friday, May 13, Jesse Lawrence decided to call it a day. He’d been working hard since early morning, trying to put the finishing touches on a gravel road he’d been building on his uncle Lloyd’s Taney County farm. He fished in the pockets of his jean jacket for his cigarettes, lit the last one, scrunched the empty pack in his fist, and tossed it into his Ford pickup. The new road was looking good. Another day or two, and the job should be done. Jesse was expecting Lloyd to come up from Shell Knob over the weekend to spend some time at the farm, probably bringing Frankie and Willie with him. No reason, he thought, for Lloyd not to be pleased with how the road was shaping up.

Lloyd was Jesse’s favorite relative on his father, Howard’s, side. As far back as he could remember he’d always liked Lloyd, always enjoyed being around him. Time spent with Lloyd was never dull. He always had some new scheme up his sleeve he’d be telling you about, or some recent adventure he’d dress up in colorful detail. Lloyd was a hustler, never at a loss for new angles, and he had personality to burn. He also had a generous side, which Jesse’d had occasion to see for himself. When times were tough, as they’d been since the breakup of Jesse’s last marriage, Lloyd had always taken the trouble to throw some work his way. He’d given him this latest job laying the gravel road, a job down at Blue Eye fixing up his cockfighting arena, other pieces of work here and there. Actually, the arrangement worked out favorably for both men. Lloyd paid well, always in cash, and Jesse made sure he got his money’s worth.

Jesse was nobody’s fool. He liked Lloyd, respected him for his derring-do, but he also knew his uncle wasn’t exactly in the running for a good citizenship award. He’d heard the rumors about methamphetamine, about Lloyd being an Ozarks drug kingpin, and he strongly suspected the rumors were true. Nothing would have surprised him about Lloyd. He knew his uncle loved to live life on the edge, and that he’d have no aversion to operating outside of the law. As long as Jesse had known him, Lloyd had considered himself invincible. He took care of business the way he wanted, always assuming nothing could touch him. And who was going to argue with him? Lloyd was tough as nails, as fearless as the pitbulls he raised for fighting. Even now, in his sixties, slowed down and overweight, you wouldn’t want to mess with Lloyd. Jesse remembered a few years ago, at the cockfights in Blue Eye, a big guy, drunk and obnoxious, started badmouthing Lloyd. The dude challenged Lloyd to a fight. Lloyd hammered him, knocked him ten rows back. The way Jesse saw it, Lloyd was into some nasty business but he was as likeable a guy as you’d ever meet. Just make sure you didn’t cross him.

Jesse stamped out his cigarette, got into his cream-colored pickup, and drove out of the property, stopping to shut and lock the gate behind him. He figured on driving to Spank’s on U.S. 160 for gas and cigarettes, then heading home to Kissee Mills the other side of Forsyth.

As Jesse was gassing up, Lloyd pulled up in his ’74 black-and-gray Chevy Suburban, with his longtime sidekick Travis Clark in the passenger seat. Jesse had seen Travis around quite a bit over the years, mostly hanging out with Lloyd, and though he didn’t know him too well, Travis had generally struck him as a pretty good guy. Slim, medium height, about Jesse’s age, somewhere in his mid-forties, Travis was known locally as a smooth talker, always working the angles, never losing his cool. He was so smooth, Jesse’d heard, he could talk you into a scheme you didn’t like faster and easier than just about anybody else could talk you into one you actually liked.

The three men stood outside Spank’s for a while, thumbs hooked
over their belt buckles, shooting the breeze. Lloyd said he and Travis had just come from their buddy Phil Church’s car dealership south of Springfield, where they’d spent the afternoon talking cockfighting. He gave Jesse a hundred bucks toward what he owed him for the roadwork and asked if Jesse’d mind spending the next day, Saturday, finishing the job. That way, Lloyd said, he’d come by the farm himself early in the morning and pay Jesse the rest of what he owed him. Jesse liked the idea. He was just as eager as Lloyd to see the job finished, though he wouldn’t be holding his breath waiting for Lloyd to show up the next morning. His uncle wasn’t known for his dependability. Anyway, it didn’t really matter whether he got paid the rest that was coming him tomorrow. Lloyd would straighten him out eventually; he always did. Jesse said that’d be fine. He’d head home now and be back at work at about eight or nine in the morning.

O
N SATURDAY MORNING
, Darrell went outside and shook off the straw that was still clinging to his clothes from his night’s sleep. He took a leak beside the barn, then gathered up his gear and went down to Rocky’s house to check out the action. Still nothing doing, nobody home. Thinking he might have to catch up with Rocky some other time, he went back toward the barn, hid his knapsack in some bushes, and made his way to a hill that gave him a partial view of the Lawrence property, probably as good as he was going to get without moving closer and risking being seen. He sat down on the hillside and watched some cattle grazing on an adjoining property a couple of ridges over, coming close once or twice to dozing off in the morning sun. About nine o’clock, an old cream-colored Ford pickup, with a big guy driving, too far away for Darrell to make out, came onto the property and disappeared behind a stand of cedars by Lloyd’s cabin. Darrell thought he heard the door to the pickup click open and slam shut, but that was it. Silence. The guy must be a lookout, one of Lloyd’s henchmen. Best wait on the hillside and see if Lloyd himself showed up.

Darrell waited until late afternoon, getting hungry now, annoyed with himself for leaving his pack with food and binoculars way over on another ridge. About four o’clock, deciding to go get the pack, he crept down the hill just as Lloyd barreled onto the property in a cloud of dust, his left elbow stuck out the open window of his Chevy Suburban. Darrell crouched in the brush beside the road and ten or twenty seconds later a second vehicle came along at a slower clip, a red-and-gray Chevy pickup, but it was too tough from his position in the brush to make out who was in it. He heard Lloyd talking with the big guy who’d come in earlier, then the sound of a door shutting, and the cream-colored pickup drove past him toward the gate. He began crawling out of the brush but some cranes nearby started kicking up a fuss, so he decided to stay put, just sit still for a while, before going over and getting his pack.

Later on, five or six hours later, after dark, Darrell left his pack in the brush by the road, and, shotgun in hand, stole up closer to Lloyd’s cabin. He saw lights in the windows and heard country music playing on a radio; it sounded like a Waylon Jennings song. He edged closer, trying to get a clearer look inside, but once again some cranes started making a racket, hollering and beating their wings. Darrell froze. He heard Lloyd tell somebody to turn off the radio. Thinking Lloyd might send somebody outside to check on the noise, or if he had dogs with him at the cabin, turn them loose, Darrell retreated to the brush, all revved up, his breath coming in short, hard gasps.
Slow down
, he told himself.
Be cool. Get this thing under control
.

Darrell felt tired and spooked, too beat down from waiting and watching and worrying to try anything else right now. He found a little draw, a dry creek bed close to the road, shrouded in brush. He spread out his bedroll and lay down. A couple of hours later, still not sleeping but with his nerves settled, he felt ready for another try. He made it halfway to the cabin, saw a light inside, then thought,
No way, something’s wrong here, too quiet, go back, go back now, get some sleep, wait till morning
.

Next morning, Sunday, May 15, Darrell decided he’d wait for
Lloyd to come to him. He picked out a spot next to a big tree, right by the road leading from Lloyd’s cabin, about twenty yards from where it forded a ten-yard-wide creek called West Fork. He cut some branches with his bowie knife and, throwing one on top of another, made a blind a little over six feet high, shaped in a semicircle. He hunkered down behind it, settling in for the wait.

Sometime later, a couple of minutes either side of noon, the day coming on hot and sticky, he heard the roar of a motor approaching from the direction of Lloyd’s cabin, the sound muffled by the trees crowding both sides of the road. He stood up, shotgun poised, ready for action
—no more waiting, this was it
—and peered through an opening near the top of the blind.

The sound beat down on him fast until, five seconds, six seconds, no time at all, it was right on top of him.

Hold it. Hold it. Don’t shoot. It’s just the kid
. Darrell lowered his gun. It was Lloyd’s grandson Willie, the poor paralyzed kid in a T-shirt and sweatpants hammering past at forty or forty-five, his Yamaha four-wheeler jacked up full throttle. The laces of his white sneakers were tied to the front rack to keep his shriveled legs from falling off, and his back was arched and arms stretched to the limit so he could work the hand levers. The kid hurtled past, eyes dead-set on the road ahead. He shot through the creek, barely slowing down, picked up the road on the other side, and scorched around a bend.